Buzzword and Online Wordprocessors
I had another look at Buzzword–an online wordprocessor–today. It’s the first time I’ve been back to it since Adobe bought it out last Autumn. I have to say that not much seems to have changed after my quick scout around. There are some improved formatting and it now handles the new Microsoft Office format (although it bailed when I tried to open a .docx file).
It still looks nice but I have not found it ready for the big time. There are a lot of on-line wordprocessors around and being developed (see TechCrunch). It is worth keeping an eye on these projects to see if the move from the desktop to the Net is viable and likely to happen any time soon. It will also be interesting to see how the big players (Adobe, Google, Microsoft) aim to make money out of these.
What I really want is a decent wordprocessor that I can embed into a learning platform/ VLE and that does not lock me into any one file format (or uses ODT). I want to be able to store the data somewhere else to separate the presentation and editing from the front-end. I.e. I want to be able to build my learning platform from modules that fit together and I see productivity tools as part of that along with email, content etc. This would give me more choice and flexibility and ultimately more confidence in moving my documents from the hard-disk to the internet.